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[Reelya]

Another factor is that people overestimate how smart modern people actually are. e.g. it's estimated that there are 15 dead people for every living person. That mean that the chance of the smartest person ever being alive right now are only 6%, regardless of what metric you use.

Also, at that level it's exponential. There's no "cap". So it's quite likely that someone hailed as the smartest of his generation, such as Turing, is literally far smarter than anyone alive today. People can't fathom genius so they extrapolate from "smart people I'm familiar with" and imagine someone slightly smarter than that. That's probably far off the mark.

[IcyTea31]

That assumes people have an equal chance of being smart at any point in time. If IQ tests are to be believed, people get smarter with every generation, to the point that new tests have to be made harder every few years to keep the curve within parameters. Another factor is education, which has become more accessible, broader and just plain better all the time, but especially in just the last couple hundred years.

This is not to say smart people didn't exist or to devalue their efforts at all. It just seems that they are more common nowadays than, say, 2000 years ago.

Edit: Also, most of the really dumb people didn't get recorded in history. Currently alive idiots more noticeable, but almost certainly existed in the past as well.

[Reelya]

That assumes people have an equal chance of being smart at any point in time. If IQ tests are to be believed, people get smarter with every generation, to the point that new tests have to be made harder every few years to keep the curve within parameters. Another factor is education, which has become more accessible, broader and just plain better all the time, but especially in just the last couple hundred years

Actually that's the same factor not "another factor". The original IQ test was crafted from student's school work, and all subsequent tests are calibrated off that: if another type of test doesn't conform to the test scores in Stanford-Binet, it's rejected. Binet never even claimed his test was an "intelligence test" it was merely to pinpoint at what level a student had absorbed the French language and maths curriculum, so the score "rose" with age, since older students were familiar with more of the questions.

Then the Stanford-Binet test was developed by merely dividing the score of Binet's "French schoolwork progress" test by your age (the quotient part of IQ) to somehow create an "intelligence test". But ... how is merely dividing a more or less randomly selected test by your age magically an "intelligence test"? All other "intelligence tests" since then need to be calibrated against something, so they're calibrated against previous intelligence tests. But since nobody can define intelligence or show how the previous tests "measure intelligence" whatsoever, this is merely the biggest circle-jerk in the history of psychology. It's quakery on the level of the most bullshit economic theory out there. e.g. there's no theory behind this. The only real theory here is "smart people are better at tests". Which tests? "Tests of smart people stuff".

All the fancy statistics they apply to the results is just smoke and mirrors. e.g. they traditionally said "males and females have equal IQ". That's one of the cornerstones. How do they know this is true? Because IQ tests are calibrated to produce that result. Women do better on some question types, and men on others. So they weight the amount of each type of question until it minimizes the gender difference. The "equal IQ" thing is circular logic, because the tests are crafted to make it so. It's not science, it's just a huge pile of ideological statsitical bullshittery and circular logic. Now, the problem is that "women have higher IQ". But ... men still outperform women on some question types, women outperform on others. So the tests could be calibrated to show equality again if they wanted. What's it showing really? It's showing that women are getting more educational attainment than they used to. The old "equal gender" IQ tests were calibrated during a time when women were under-educated. So they were inadvertently downplaying the impact of differences in education level between the genders, by adding more weight to "pro-female" questions. Now though, women are rapidly advancing in education, but the tests have solidified: they're not actively calibrating them any more like they used to. But the bias towards verbal questions remains in the test, so women have "higher IQ" now. But you could just as easily make a test that consistently showed equality or that men were smarter. There's no theory which explains why the current calibration between the maths and verbal portion in any way reflects reality.

Basically the thing IQ tests test most is your absorption of traditional schooling materials. Or things which have been proven to also correlate well with your absorption of traditional schooling materials. That's how the tests are "calibrated". There's a reason nobody cites IQ tests any more. They've been discredited in professional circles, because it was proven they don't predict interesting things they were supposed to, such as whether you're going to be any good at anything (0% predictive power of workplace success). IQ is more or less sociology fanfic now, rather than a tool people in sociology actually make use of.

However ... also remember that IQ due to education only measures population averages. In earlier times, higher education was limited to the wealthy, but also to extremely bright students. So exceptional outliers received higher education. That means that the general increase in school access for the working class and women could raise testable IQ scores, but have little relationship to genius.

[Tiruin]

That assumes people have an equal chance of being smart at any point in time. If IQ tests are to be believed, people get smarter with every generation, to the point that new tests have to be made harder every few years to keep the curve within parameters. [...]

That's the Flynn Effect for ya :O Familiarity, and standardization over time.

[...]
All the fancy statistics they apply to the results is just smoke and mirrors.[...]

Now that's an insult to psychometricians, and the board I'm preparing for this Oct 30. But that's me taking that literally and limitedly.
Tests also take in the person's context, rather than the old and traditional way of 'mental age/chronological age'. And there is pretty much the note of 'while there is variance between men and women, they are statistically significantly equal' overall. :v

IQ is more or less sociology fanfic now, rather than a tool people in sociology actually make use of.

Reminds me of when the whole IQ "craze" happened, which left out EQ and other factors more contributing to one's performance--not that exact, but it helped characterize those factors.

Reading through Icy's notes has me recall the fun of history; you get to see how progress in concepts happen as they did. Pretty awesome.

[Reelya]

'while there is variance between men and women, they are statistically significantly equal'

That misses a lot of nuance. For example, men have an SD of about 15 on IQ tests vs women with an SD of 14. It's similar on many other types of tests however, not just "IQ" tests.

That might sound small, but it means men have bigger tails on the distribution. At IQ 150+ (or IQ of below 50) it means there are something like 5 men to 1 woman. That's a statistically meaningful difference, right there, because outliers for traits are the ones that tend to be noteworthy, regardless of what we think the test is really measuring.

[scriver]

It was visually stunning.

It made no bloody sense.

Are you referring to Blade Runner or Fury Road?

Fury Road.

Blade Runner is a piece of shit, but that’s just because I’m something of a purist when it comes to source material. It’s pretty good (the first one, anyway) if you don’t consider how awfully it treats the book.

The book it adapted or the book it took its name from? Because I would say one of those got the shorter end of the stick by far.

[Tiruin]

Masters is pretty...awesome. I haven't felt so free and so guided since I was in elementary--feedback over the stuff you do, and especially the mutuality is so awesome.

Spoiler: IQ stuff (click to show/hide)

'while there is variance between men and women, they are statistically significantly equal'

That misses a lot of nuance. For example, men have an SD of about 15 on IQ tests vs women with an SD of 14. It's similar on many other types of tests however, not just "IQ" tests.

That might sound small, but it means men have bigger tails on the distribution. At IQ 150+ (or IQ of below 50) it means there are something like 5 men to 1 woman. That's a statistically meaningful difference, right there, because outliers for traits are the ones that tend to be noteworthy, regardless of what we think the test is really measuring.

Not internationally though! :3 This is the importance of the culture-fit factor of IQ tests and otherwise! While anyone can search for the popular IQ tests online, there are many localized ones that are better in validity/reliability, and non-searchable online. (mwahaha)
Why I mentioned that, is because there are many areas in the world where legitimate details as you mentioned may not apply as well, and are also inverted (included because nudging local psychology notes the importance of culture and context [ie Filipino Psychology on my part, started as overseas professors noticed that those tests widely used and known? not really applicable in different contexts, even if just translated.])
But a big obstacle is proving such--concurrent and other styles of checking, and time, and money.
...Especially funding. -.-

I remember how awesome it is in reading up on all that, as I recall, thanks to your cuing Reelya :3

[Frumple]

The walls are a lie.

Castlevania speedruns can be absurd in all the right ways, some days.

[ArchAIngel]

The walls are a lie.

Castlevania speedruns can be absurd in all the right ways, some days.

Speaking of Castlevania, we have Hellsing Ultimate Abridged Episode 8.

[Sirus]

The walls are a lie.

Castlevania speedruns can be absurd in all the right ways, some days.

Friggin TASs. I love ones like these.

[Reelya]

Masters is pretty...awesome. I haven't felt so free and so guided since I was in elementary--feedback over the stuff you do, and especially the mutuality is so awesome.

Spoiler: IQ stuff (click to show/hide)

'while there is variance between men and women, they are statistically significantly equal'

That misses a lot of nuance. For example, men have an SD of about 15 on IQ tests vs women with an SD of 14. It's similar on many other types of tests however, not just "IQ" tests.

That might sound small, but it means men have bigger tails on the distribution. At IQ 150+ (or IQ of below 50) it means there are something like 5 men to 1 woman. That's a statistically meaningful difference, right there, because outliers for traits are the ones that tend to be noteworthy, regardless of what we think the test is really measuring.

Not internationally though! :3 This is the importance of the culture-fit factor of IQ tests and otherwise! While anyone can search for the popular IQ tests online, there are many localized ones that are better in validity/reliability, and non-searchable online. ...

I remember how awesome it is in reading up on all that, as I recall, thanks to your cuing Reelya :3

You actually might like this, it's Steven Pinker summarizing a lot of research into gender differences in cogintion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aAjvZoaDPE
Here's the full debate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHhnqh6u3Vo

One of the most interesting bits of research is that if you give baby monkeys human toys to play with, boy monkeys prefer cars much more than girl monkeys. The same result has been found in two different species of monkeys in separate research. Plus as shown in the last link, toy-preference of human babies is predicted within a single gender by measure sex hormone levels. However there are wa bunch of academics such as the other side in that debate who claim all this evidence is fake news.

[redwallzyl]

Masters is pretty...awesome. I haven't felt so free and so guided since I was in elementary--feedback over the stuff you do, and especially the mutuality is so awesome.

Spoiler: IQ stuff (click to show/hide)

'while there is variance between men and women, they are statistically significantly equal'

That misses a lot of nuance. For example, men have an SD of about 15 on IQ tests vs women with an SD of 14. It's similar on many other types of tests however, not just "IQ" tests.

That might sound small, but it means men have bigger tails on the distribution. At IQ 150+ (or IQ of below 50) it means there are something like 5 men to 1 woman. That's a statistically meaningful difference, right there, because outliers for traits are the ones that tend to be noteworthy, regardless of what we think the test is really measuring.

Not internationally though! :3 This is the importance of the culture-fit factor of IQ tests and otherwise! While anyone can search for the popular IQ tests online, there are many localized ones that are better in validity/reliability, and non-searchable online. ...

I remember how awesome it is in reading up on all that, as I recall, thanks to your cuing Reelya :3

You actually might like this, it's Steven Pinker summarizing a lot of research into gender differences in cogintion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aAjvZoaDPE
Here's the full debate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHhnqh6u3Vo

One of the most interesting bits of research is that if you give baby monkeys human toys to play with, boy monkeys prefer cars much more than girl monkeys. The same result has been found in two different species of monkeys in separate research. Plus as shown in the last link, toy-preference of human babies is predicted within a single gender by measure sex hormone levels. However there are wa bunch of academics such as the other side in that debate who claim all this evidence is fake news.

As an anthropologist the first question I would ask about any such studies whether IQ or toy is whether it was done cross culturally. Also whether the methodology is accounting for bias in the tests. If a constant gap appears in the IQ test (a dubious and misunderstood measure to begin with) I would then figure out what exactly the difference is and whether it is consistent across all cultures as to what the deficiency is. does it follow a predictable pattern? is it the result of test bias? excreta. once every attempt at refutation of the hypotheses you can think of fails then and only then can you make the tentative assertion that the data indicates a difference in test results and let others attempt replication of the study. what most idiots do is just do it once with a limited scope with no followup and say shit like women are less intelligent then men or this race is less intelligent the white people. or take a look a a scientific paper they don't understand and make stupid claims.

Also I think IQ tests were devised to measure what students were behind in class and needed extra help to catch up and are expected to change over time and they exhibit relationships with everything from neural degeneration to depression. hardly the thing you should go sticking around to make grand claims of abstract intelligence levels. It's merely a measure of current knowledge that changes rapidly with education and other such things not a permanent marker of the potential of anyone and anyone who says such a thing has no idea that they are talking about.

[Reelya]

once every attempt at refutation of the hypotheses you can think of fails then and only then can you make the tentative assertion that the data indicates a difference in test results and let others attempt replication of the study.

Why would the "no difference" position be the automatic default? You haven't shown why "100% nurture" should be the null hypothesis at all, for data which shows a difference.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The most common pattern here is that a wide number of studies show evidence of a difference, but on the basis of possible doubts, the opponents stick to a religious-like belief that there is no difference until proven otherwise. But that's a positive claim, not a negative one.

If you have no strong evidence either way, then the working hypothesis should rationally default to a 50/50 position on nature vs nurture / difference vs no-difference, not veer all the way to nurture because there's a possibility that the observable data might be mistaken. Otherwise, the position is no more rational than saying we can't know for sure how the first lifeforms evolved, therefore its must be the God of the bible which did it.

There's no reason that biology needs to adhere to our political correctness feel-good shit, really is there? e.g. your fellow anthropologists hold that brain size has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence, because that would go against political correctness. You have to explain why brain size and intelligence wouldn't be correlated. It's actually a quite extraordinary claim, and certainly shouldn't just be assumed to be a scientific truth in the absence of evidence.

e.g. one article is titled "Why Brain Size Doesn’t Correlate With Intelligence" in the Smithsonian Magazine and 100% of the arguments are terrible, e.g. saying "well whales have big brains and they're dumber than us, aren't they?" And emotional counter-factual reasoning:

Consider the humble dog, Canis familiaris. The brain of a wolf-size dog is about 30 percent smaller than that of an actual gray wolf, its ancestor. Has the dog become less smart since it went its own evolutionary way thousands of years ago? Judge for yourself: When the mere gaze from the dewy eyes of a member of this species causes you to get up from the couch, repair to the refrigerator and retrieve a hunk of cheese for your charge—well, you tell me who is smarter.

God that's a shit argument for "brain size doesn't matter". Domestic dogs are like overgrown babies who don't even need to properly take care of their own young, since we've intervened in everything. Wolves have to be self-sufficient, raise their young to do the same, and coordinate pack hunting without human help.

Meanwhile, the "correlation" part of the headline is not explored at all in the article. You can google the topic and wikipedia holds the "contrary" position that almost all research on the matter agrees that brain size is strongly correlated with intelligence, at at around a 0.4 correlation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_and_intelligence#Brain_volume

So, brain size strongly predicts intelligence yet popular accounts hold that there's no gender difference in intelligence despite a difference in brain size. If that's the case, that would need to be explained by something like a biological difference between men's and women's brains which exactly compensates for their average brain size being smaller. A "just so" biological mechanism, if you will. And then you'd have to explain why that same biological trick didn't also evolve in men's brains ...

This logical conundrum is why the "nurture" / "no gender difference" people cling to the lifeboat of saying "brain size doesn't matter at all" against all the odds and scientific evidence. Because if you accept the science then the rest of the ideology starts to unravel.

An alternate explanation is that there are compensatory adaptations in women's brains that increase their bang-for-buck ratio compared to an equal-weight of men's brains, but that they're not cost free. Otherwise men would have evolved them (any cost-free adaptation will spread to everyone). So women's brains tend to be really good - but at slightly different things to the "average man", which allows IQ tests to exist and be ideologically calibrated to weight the questions such that they achieve "gender neutrality" on the tests.

And this isn't sexism. It's just saying that people with larger brains tend to have better cognition - which is backed by science. If it ends up supporting some "uncomfortable truths" then - sucks to be humans I guess? The universe never promised to adhere to our various ideologies.

[Gunner-Chan]

I don't know why this apparently became the topic for this but... It's something that could go places so I'd rather you guys take it somewhere else.

[highmax28]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRiAmyy8Pn8

PLEASE. Go watch this and have a laugh. It's STILL funny and I watched it like 10 times now, and every time, it hurts to laugh.

Might be because I'm sick, but meh...